VITEX AGNUS CASTUS

The common name of this herb is Agnus Castus. It is not a cactus (it is sometimes mispronounced "Agnus Cactus"), but a member of the Verbena family.

The name 'Agnus Castus' derives from the Greek for 'chaste'. According to Pliny, writing in the first century, Greek women wishing to preserve their chastity placed leaves of this plant on their beds and slept on them. Pliny's contemporary, Dioscorides, claimed that Agnus Castus preserved chastity because it smells so bad that, when strewn on the bed, it was enough to deter amorous advances from men!

Agnus Castus was certainly used widely by the ancient herbalists. Dioscorides even concurs with its current uses; "it both brings down the milk and expels the menstrua".

Although not a native plant of the UK, records indicate that it was in use here by 1500. It is then mentioned in Gerard's herbal in the seventeenth century. Until recent years, though, you would have difficulty finding much written in UK herb books about Agnus Castus. It is in the rest of Europe that the herb has had the most use over the past century.

Only in the last ten years has it become popular again in the UK - and, now, in America.

Although Agnus Castus is recommended by several sources for increasing breast milk - as referred to by Dioscorides - I have come across little evidence for this.

(Next: Dosage of Agnus Castus...)

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